August Practice: Week 3
You're halfway through the August Practice Kickstarter! Dig into the details a bit with some more challenging etudes, exercises, and solo work.
Week 3 Practice Concepts
Play an etude
Pick an etude you’ve studied on B-flat clarinet, and work on it on the E-flat clarinet. It’s important to learn to play expressively, without sacrificing sound and intonation. Some of my favorites are the Jeanjean 16 Modern Studies.
Tuning
Play through arpeggios with a drone. This can be a faster alternative to playing through scales, and can also be a good way to focus on intonation in chords - something that will be important in ensemble playing. Keep a your fingering chart handy - you may need to come up with fingerings that address intonation but minimize awkward motion between notes. Fingerings that work with scales won’t always work with larger intervals!
Read an article
Different perspectives can really help energize your practice sessions. Read a few articles on E-flat clarinet. You can find great information in journals such as The Instrumentalist and The Clarinet. Click here for an article by Wesley Ferreira to get you started.
Excerpt: Symphonie Fantastique
If you’ve never tried this quintessential E-flat clarinet excerpt, you’ll find that it has a few challenges. Aside from needing great rhythm and air control, you’ll also need to work out all those trills. Try practicing small sections with trills under tempo, and decide how many ‘wiggles’ you’re going to do before you start (I like to practice with two). Keep your trills as fast as you can while maintaining relaxed fingers and good hand position, and then hold to principal note for the remainder of the note duration - in other words, play the trill quickly even if you are playing the excerpt at half speed. This will help you maintain good air support through the phrase. For additional finger practice, try transposing measures with a lot of trills to a few different keys.
Make an intonation chart
On a piece of staff paper, write out a few scales (or the entire chromatic range if you’re ambitious!). The next time you practice, take note of your pitch three different ways: playing the pitch alone, ascend a scale and end on that pitch, and descend a scale and end on that pitch. Remember that you may have a few different fingerings for some of the notes!
Pick a solo piece
There is a decent amount of E-flat clarinet music available, and a solo piece (unaccompanied or with piano) can be a fun addition to a recital. Studying a solo piece helps to build confidence in players that are used to relying on a band section, and playing with piano is a great way to work on intonation. Not sure what pieces are out there? Check out the searchable database.
Share your progress, etude ideas, and questions with the E-flat clarinet community by posting on Instagram and tagging @eflatclarinetproject in your posts, or commenting on this week’s Facebook post!